Soumya Kapoor Mehta

Soumya is working as the Senior Economist with the India Country Management Unit of the World Bank. Before that, Soumya served as the Task Team Leader for the India Gender and Social Inclusion Platform, where she helped shape the Bank’s engagement on several critical agendas such as childcare and tribal welfare, and led a series of core analytics including the Country Gender Assessment. Between 2019 and 2021, she was the Head of the Institute of What Works to Advance Gender Equality (IWWAGE), India’s premier gender research and policy advocacy center.

Soumya was a co-author of the World Bank’s 2009 study - Moving out of Poverty (together with Deepa Narayan and Lant Pritchett), and a core team member of its flagship report on social inclusion - Inclusion Matters: The Foundation for Shared Prosperity and empowerment, Measuring Empowerment: Cross Disciplinary Perspectives. Her work includes the book - Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India - on the feasibility of universal basic income as a policy instrument and the report - Scaling the Heights: Social Inclusion and Sustainable Development in Himachal Pradesh  - documenting the success of Himachal Pradesh in advancing sustainable development.

Soumya holds a M.A. (Cantab) in Economics from the University of Cambridge, and has been Visting Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.